Wednesday, May 15, 2013

One public school foreign English teacher won't be getting any letters for teachers' day today. From Yonhap:

American English teacher robs convenience store... blows the money at a casino

Taught openly for three days before he was arrested

(Daegu - Yonhap News) An elementary school native speaking English teacher robbed a convenience store but the fact he was arrested was belatedly confirmed.

For three days after committing the crime the currently employed native speaking English teacher openly went to school and taught children until he was arrested.

Gyeongsangbuk-do Police Agency revealed that they arrested American native speaking teacher A (27) for going into a convenience store with a weapon, threatening a female clerk and stealing 600,000 won and cigarettes

Teacher A is suspected of entering a convenience store in Gyeongsan at 10:20 pm on April 21 wearing a hat, sunglasses and a hood to cover his face. He threatened a female clerk with a weapon he'd prepared and stole 600,000 won and ten packs of cigarettes.

The investigation found that the day after the robbery, he went to the casino at the Hotel Inter-Burgo in Daegu and bought 200,000 won worth of casino chips and exchanged 50,000 won notes to use.

An official from the Gyeongsangbuk-do Police Agency said that "Teacher A was drunk when he committed the crime." "CCTV cameras in the area of the convenience store revealed that teacher A carefully committed the crime, changing his clothes after leaving the store and returning home."

The arrested teacher, A, came to Korea in August 2010 and worked as a native speaking teacher in places like Yeongdeok and Gyeongsan in Gyeongsangbuk-do.

He taught elementary school students 15 hours a week in after school English classes.

A school official said, "Until we were notified by police, we knew absolutely nothing about the crime." "Teacher A was stripped of his qualifications on May 1."

If the accusations are true, there's not much more to say than "Nicely done, douchebag."

I do find the whole "he taught openly" part to be odd (was he going to teach secretly?), though that's more a journalistic convention than anything else. Stranger still is the idea that the school - or anyone - could have known what he'd done prior to his arrest. "Until we were notified by police, we knew absolutely nothing about the crime." Well, duh.

I'd be curious to see how long he's put in jail for - I imagine armed robbery prior to a trip to a casino won't go over very well in court.